Throwback Thursday: A Rejected Poem from 2002-06

This was originally composed in 2001, when I was feeling all my 24 years because I was dating a very sprightly undergraduate. She was (still is--I see you, Taryn!) an excellent poet, and forced me to bring original compositions to read at a poetry thing she was hosting. This poem was based on an actual dream, and I still sort of like it, or at least one line, which I have been trying to work into other things since. I revised and submitted this to my friends' Bordeaux-based literary magazine in 2006. It was rejected (Rachael, Debbie, no hard feelings! Vous me manquez!). Please to enjoy as a cultural artifact, like a copy of The Stranger when Dan Savage's column was still called "Hey Faggot," and not as, um, literature.

my Hanson Dream, which I’ll tell you and not anyone else and only because I think you already know

It’s not easy you know

getting older

getting ma’amed

The middle one doesn’t seem to care though

the middle one who looks just like a girl which is just like my kind of boy.

The middle one downy hair shines on his cheeks who plays keyboards and comes up to me after the show

but makes me feel

like I came up to him the middle one that I call cute and adorable because anything else is too big

too big to fit in my pocket.

He tells me his name, as if I don’t know it.  Hi, I’m Blank Hanson he says and maybe I really don’t know it.

Hi Blank, I’m Margaret I say and I lean in closer and I can smell his hair and it smells like hair and I say baby, you’re so fresh tomorrow you’ll be half price.

We smile and this is the part my favorite part all my favorite parts and this is why I wouldn’t tell just anyone.

I should wake up to the bed we unmade and the hair and the smile but instead there is more hair and less smiles

the middle one

(he will now be known as my lover the middle one)

sleeps as his two brothers stare at me it doesn’t work like that they say you can’t just have the middle and my horror fades and I resign myself and I say to myself as I said to the middle one (my lover the middle one)

last night not caring for those who bracket him

I’m glad I’m so glad

we met.